The Marriage Contract

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That "why" was the first note of a rising distrust; did it prove the
power of those maternal instructions?

There are certain characters which on the faith of a single proof
believe in friendship. To persons thus constituted the north wind
drives away the clouds as rapidly as the south wind brings them; they
stop at effects and never hark back to causes. Paul had one of those
essentially confiding natures, without ill-feelings, but also without
foresight. His weakness proceeded far more from his kindness, his
belief in goodness, than from actual debility of soul.

Natalie was sad and thoughtful, for she knew not what to do without
her mother. Paul, with that self-confident conceit which comes of
love, smiled to himself at her sadness, thinking how soon the
pleasures of marriage and the excitements of Paris would drive it
away. Madame Evangelista saw this confidence with much satisfaction.
She had already taken two great steps. Her daughter possessed the
diamonds which had cost Paul two hundred thousand francs; and she had
gained her point of leaving these two children to themselves with no
other guide than their illogical love. Her revenge was thus preparing,
unknown to her daughter, who would, sooner or later, become its
accomplice. Did Natalie love Paul? That was a question still
undecided, the answer to which might modify her projects, for she
loved her daughter too sincerely not to respect her happiness. Paul's
future, therefore, still depended on himself. If he could make his
wife love him, he was saved.

The next day, at midnight, after an evening spent together, with the
addition of the four witnesses, to whom Madame Evangelista gave the
formal dinner which follows the legal marriage, the bridal pair,
accompanied by their friends, heard mass by torchlight, in presence of
a crowd of inquisitive persons. A marriage celebrated at night always
suggests to the mind an unpleasant omen. Light is the symbol of life
and pleasure, the forecasts of which are lacking to a midnight
wedding. Ask the intrepid soul why it shivers; why the chill of those
black arches enervates it; why the sound of steps startles it; why it
notices the cry of bats and the hoot of owls. Though there is
absolutely no reason to tremble, all present do tremble, and the
darkness, emblem of death, saddens them. Natalie, parted from her
mother, wept. The girl was now a prey to those doubts which grasp the
heart as it enters a new career in which, despite all assurances of
happiness, a thousand pitfalls await the steps of a young wife. She
was cold and wanted a mantle. The air and manner of Madame Evangelista
and that of the bridal pair excited some comment among the elegant
crowd which surrounded the altar.

"Solonet tells me that the bride and bridegroom leave for Paris
to-morrow morning, all alone."

"Madame Evangelista was to live with them, I thought."

"Count Paul has got rid of her already."

"What a mistake!" said the Marquise de Gyas. "To shut the door on the
mother of his wife is to open it to a lover. Doesn't he know what a
mother is?"

"He has been very hard on Madame Evangelista; the poor woman has had
to sell her house and her diamonds, and is going to live at Lanstrac."

"Natalie looks very sad."

"Would you like to be made to take a journey the day after your
marriage?"

"It is very awkward."

"I am glad I came here to-night," said a lady. "I am now convinced of
the necessity of the pomps of marriage and of wedding fetes; a scene
like this is very bare and sad. If I may say what I think," she added,
in a whisper to her neighbor, "this marriage seems to me indecent."

Madame Evangelista took Natalie in her carriage and accompanied her,
alone, to Paul's house.

"Well, mother, it is done!"

"Remember, my dear child, my last advice, and you will be a happy
woman. Be his wife, and not his mistress."

When Natalie had retired, the mother played the little comedy of
flinging herself with tears into the arms of her son-in-law. It was
the only provincial thing that Madame Evangelista allowed herself, but
she had her reasons for it. Amid tears and speeches, apparently half
wild and despairing, she obtained of Paul those concessions which all
husbands make.

The next day she put the married pair into their carriage, and
accompanied them to the ferry, by which the road to Paris crosses the
Gironde. With a look and a word Natalie enabled her mother to see that
if Paul had won the trick in the game of the contract, her revenge was
beginning. Natalie was already reducing her husband to perfect
obedience.



CHAPTER VI

CONCLUSION

Five years later, on an afternoon in the month of November, Comte Paul
de Manerville, wrapped in a cloak, was entering, with a bowed head and
a mysterious manner, the house of his old friend Monsieur Mathias at
Bordeaux.

Too old to continue in business, the worthy notary had sold his
practice and was ending his days peacefully in a quiet house to which
he had retired. An urgent affair had obliged him to be absent at the
moment of his guest's arrival, but his housekeeper, warned of Paul's
coming, took him to the room of the late Madame Mathias, who had been
dead a year. Fatigued by a rapid journey, Paul slept till evening.
When the old man reached home he went up to his client's room, and
watched him sleeping, as a mother watches her child. Josette, the old
housekeeper, followed her master and stood before the bed, her hands
on her hips.

"It is a year to-day, Josette, since I received my dear wife's last
sigh; I little knew then that I should stand here again to see the
count half dead."

"Poor man! he moans in his sleep," said Josette.

"Sac a papier!" cried the old notary, an innocent oath which was a
sign with him of the despair on a man of business before
insurmountable difficulties. "At any rate," he thought, "I have
saved the title to the Lanstrac estate for him, and that of Ausac,
Saint-Froult, and his house, though the usufruct has gone." Mathias
counted his fingers. "Five years! Just five years this month, since
his old aunt, now dead, that excellent Madame de Maulincour, asked
for the hand of that little crocodile of a woman, who has finally
ruined him--as I expected."

And the gouty old gentleman, leaning on his cane, went to walk in the
little garden till his guest should awake. At nine o'clock supper was
served, for Mathias took supper. The old man was not a little
astonished, when Paul joined him, to see that his old client's brow
was calm and his face serene, though noticeably changed. If at the age
of thirty-three the Comte de Manerville seemed to be a man of forty,
that change in his appearance was due solely to mental shocks;
physically, he was well. He clasped the old man's hand affectionately,
and forced him not to rise, saying:--

"Dear, kind Maitre Mathias, you, too, have had your troubles."

"Mine were natural troubles, Monsieur le comte; but yours--"

"We will talk of that presently, while we sup."

"If I had not a son in the magistracy, and a daughter married," said
the good old man, "you would have found in old Mathias, believe me,
Monsieur le comte, something better than mere hospitality. Why have
you come to Bordeaux at the very moment when posters are on all the
walls of the seizure of your farms at Grassol and Guadet, the vineyard
of Belle-Rose and the family mansion? I cannot tell you the grief I
feel at the sight of those placards,--I, who for forty years nursed
that property as if it belonged to me; I, who bought it for your
mother when I was only third clerk to Monsieur Chesnau, my
predecessor, and wrote the deeds myself in my best round hand; I, who
have those titles now in my successor's office; I, who have known you
since you were so high"; and the old man stopped to put his hand near
the ground. "Ah! a man must have been a notary for forty-one years and
a half to know the sort of grief I feel to see my name exposed before
the face of Israel in those announcements of the seizure and sale of
the property. When I pass through the streets and see men reading
these horrible yellow posters, I am ashamed, as if my own honor and
ruin were concerned. Some fools will stand there and read them aloud
expressly to draw other fools about them--and what imbecile remarks
they make! As if a man were not master of his own property! Your
father ran through two fortunes before he made the one he left you;
and you wouldn't be a Manerville if you didn't do likewise. Besides,
seizures of real estate have a whole section of the Code to
themselves; they are expected and provided for; you are in a position
recognized by the law.--If I were not an old man with white hair, I
would thrash those fools I hear reading aloud in the streets such an
abomination as this," added the worthy notary, taking up a paper; "'At
the request of Dame Natalie Evangelista, wife of Paul-Francois-Joseph,
Comte de Manerville, separated from him as to worldly goods and
chattels by the Lower court of the department of the Seine--'"

"Yes, and now separated in body," said Paul.

"Ah!" exclaimed the old man.

"Oh! against my wife's will," added the count, hastily. "I was forced
to deceive her; she did not know that I was leaving her."

"You have left her?"

"My passage is taken; I sail for Calcutta on the 'Belle-Amelie.'"

"Two day's hence!" cried the notary. "Then, Monsieur le comte, we
shall never meet again."

"You are only seventy-three, my dear Mathias, and you have the gout,
the brevet of old age. When I return I shall find you still afoot.
Your good head and heart will be as sound as ever, and you will help
me to reconstruct what is now a shaken edifice. I intend to make a
noble fortune in seven years. I shall be only forty on my return. All
is still possible at that age."

"You?" said Mathias, with a gesture of amazement,--you, Monsieur le
comte, to undertake commerce! How can you even think of it?"

"I am no longer Monsieur le comte, dear Mathias. My passage is taken
under the name of Camille, one of my mother's baptismal names. I have
acquirements which will enable me to make my fortune otherwise than in
business. Commerce, at any rate, will be only my final chance. I start
with a sum in hand sufficient for the redemption of my future on a
large scale."

"Where is that money?"

"A friend is to send it to me."

The old man dropped his fork as he heard the word "friend," not in
surprise, not scoffingly, but in grief; his look and manner expressed
the pain he felt in finding Paul under the influence of a deceitful
illusion; his practised eye fathomed a gulf where the count saw
nothing but solid ground.

"I have been fifty years in the notariat," he said, "and I never yet
knew a ruined man whose friend would lend him money."

"You don't know de Marsay. I am certain that he has sold out some of
his investments already, and to-morrow you will receive from him a
bill of exchange for one hundred and fifty thousand francs."

"I hope I may. If that be so, cannot your friend settle your
difficulties here? You could live quietly at Lanstrac for five or six
years on your wife's income, and so recover yourself."

"No assignment or economy on my part could pay off fifteen hundred
thousand francs of debt, in which my wife is involved to the amount of
five hundred and fifty thousand."

"You cannot mean to say that in four years you have incurred a million
and a half of debt?"

"Nothing is more certain, Mathias. Did I not give those diamonds to my
wife? Did I not spend the hundred and fifty thousand I received from
the sale of Madame Evangelista's house, in the arrangement of my house
in Paris? Was I not forced to use other money for the first payments
on that property demanded by the marriage contract? I was even forced
to sell out Natalie's forty thousand a year in the Funds to complete
the purchase of Auzac and Saint-Froult. We sold at eighty-seven,
therefore I became in debt for over two hundred thousand francs within
a month after my marriage. That left us only sixty-seven thousand
francs a year; but we spent fully three times as much every year. Add
all that up, together with rates of interest to usurers, and you will
soon find a million."

"Br-r-r!" exclaimed the old notary. "Go on. What next?"

"Well, I wanted, in the first place, to complete for my wife that set
of jewels of which she had the pearl necklace clasped by the family
diamond, the 'Discreto,' and her mother's ear-rings. I paid a hundred
thousand francs for a coronet of diamond wheat-ears. There's eleven
hundred thousand. And now I find I owe the fortune of my wife, which
amounts to three hundred and sixty-six thousand francs of her 'dot.'"

"But," said Mathias, "if Madame la comtesse had given up her diamonds
and you had pledged your income you could have pacified your creditors
and have paid them off in time."

"When a man is down, Mathias, when his property is covered with
mortgages, when his wife's claims take precedence of his creditors',
and when that man has notes out for a hundred thousand francs which he
must pay (and I hope I can do so out of the increased value of my
property here), what you propose is not possible."

"This is dreadful!" cried Mathias; "would you sell Belle-Rose with the
vintage of 1825 still in the cellars?"

"I cannot help myself."

"Belle-Rose is worth six hundred thousand francs."

"Natalie will buy it in; I have advised her to do so."

"I might push the price to seven hundred thousand, and the farms are
worth a hundred thousand each."

"Then if the house in Bordeaux can be sold for two hundred thousand--"

"Solonet will give more than that; he wants it. He is retiring with a
handsome property made by gambling on the Funds. He has sold his
practice for three hundred thousand francs, and marries a mulatto
woman. God knows how she got her money, but they say it amounts to
millions. A notary gambling in stocks! a notary marrying a black
woman! What an age! It is said that he speculates for your
mother-in-law with her funds."

"She has greatly improved Lanstrac and taken great pains with its
cultivation. She has amply repaid me for the use of it."

"I shouldn't have thought her capable of that."

"She is so kind and so devoted; she has always paid Natalie's debts
during the three months she spent with us every year in Paris."

"She could well afford to do so, for she gets her living out of
Lanstrac," said Mathias. "She! grown economical! what a miracle! I am
told she has just bought the domain of Grainrouge between Lanstrac
and Grassol; so that if the Lanstrac avenue were extended to the
high-road, you would drive four and a half miles through your own
property to reach the house. She paid one hundred thousand francs
down for Grainrouge."

"She is as handsome as ever," said Paul; "country life preserves her
freshness; I don't mean to go to Lanstrac and bid her good-bye; her
heart would bleed for me too much."

"You would go in vain; she is now in Paris. She probably arrived there
as you left."

"No doubt she had heard of the sale of my property and came to help
me. I have no complaint to make of life, Mathias. I am truly loved,
--as much as any man ever could be here below; beloved by two women
who outdo each other in devotion; they are even jealous of each other;
the daughter blames the mother for loving me too much, and the mother
reproaches the daughter for what she calls her dissipations. I may say
that this great affection has been my ruin. How could I fail to
satisfy even the slightest caprice of a loving wife? Impossible to
restrain myself! Neither could I accept any sacrifice on her part. We
might certainly, as you say, live at Lanstrac, save my income, and
part with her diamonds, but I would rather go to India and work for a
fortune than tear my Natalie from the life she enjoys. So it was I who
proposed the separation as to property. Women are angels who ought not
to be mixed up in the sordid interests of life."

Old Mathias listened in doubt and amazement.

"You have no children, I think," he said.

"Fortunately, none," replied Paul.

"That is not my idea of marriage," remarked the old notary, naively.
"A wife ought, in my opinion, to share the good and evil fortunes of
her husband. I have heard that young married people who love like
lovers, do not want children? Is pleasure the only object of marriage?
I say that object should be the joys of family. Moreover, in this case
--I am afraid you will think me too much of notary--your marriage
contract made it incumbent upon you to have a son. Yes, monsieur le
comte, you ought to have had at once a male heir to consolidate that
entail. Why not? Madame Evangelista was strong and healthy; she had
nothing to fear in maternity. You will tell me, perhaps, that these
are the old-fashioned notions of our ancestors. But in those noble
families, Monsieur le comte, the legitimate wife thought it her duty
to bear children and bring them up nobly; as the Duchesse de Sully,
the wife of the great Sully, said, a wife is not an instrument of
pleasure, but the honor and virtue of her household."

"You don't know women, my good Mathias," said Paul. "In order to be
happy we must love them as they want to be loved. Isn't there
something brutal in at once depriving a wife of her charms, and
spoiling her beauty before she has begun to enjoy it?"

"If you had had children your wife would not have dissipated your
fortune; she would have stayed at home and looked after them."

"If you were right, dear friend," said Paul, frowning, "I should be
still more unhappy than I am. Do not aggravate my sufferings by
preaching to me after my fall. Let me go, without the pang of looking
backward to my mistakes."

The next day Mathias received a bill of exchange for one hundred and
fifty thousand francs from de Marsay.

"You see," said Paul, "he does not write a word to me. He begins by
obliging me. Henri's nature is the most imperfectly perfect, the most
illegally beautiful that I know. If you knew with what superiority
that man, still young, can rise above sentiments, above self-interests,
and judge them, you would be astonished, as I am, to find how much
heart he has."

Mathias tried to battle with Paul's determination, but he found it
irrevocable, and it was justified by so many cogent reasons that the
old man finally ceased his endeavors to retain his client.

It is seldom that vessels sail promptly at the time appointed, but on
this occasion, by a fateful circumstance for Paul, the wind was fair
and the "Belle-Amelie" sailed on the morrow, as expected. The quay was
lined with relations, and friends, and idle persons. Among them were
several who had formerly known Manerville. His disaster, posted on the
walls of the town, made him as celebrated as he was in the days of his
wealth and fashion. Curiosity was aroused; every one had their word to
say about him. Old Mathias accompanied his client to the quay, and his
sufferings were sore as he caught a few words of those remarks:--

"Who could recognize in that man you see over there, near old Mathias,
the dandy who was called the Pink of Fashion five years ago, and made,
as they say, 'fair weather and foul' in Bordeaux."

"What! that stout, short man in the alpaca overcoat, who looks like a
groom,--is that Comte Paul de Manerville?"

"Yes, my dear, the same who married Mademoiselle Evangelista. Here he
is, ruined, without a penny to his name, going out to India to look
for luck."

"But how did he ruin himself? he was very rich."

"Oh! Paris, women, play, luxury, gambling at the Bourse--"

"Besides," said another, "Manerville always was a poor creature; no
mind, soft as papier-mache, he'd let anybody shear the wool from his
back; incapable of anything, no matter what. He was born to be
ruined."

Paul wrung the hand of the old man and went on board. Mathias stood
upon the pier, looking at his client, who leaned against the shrouds,
defying the crowed before him with a glance of contempt. At the moment
when the sailors began to weigh anchor, Paul noticed that Mathias was
making signals to him with his handkerchief. The old housekeeper had
hurried to her master, who seemed to be excited by some sudden event.
Paul asked the captain to wait a moment, and send a boat to the pier,
which was done. Too feeble himself to go aboard, Mathias gave two
letters to a sailor in the boat.

"My friend," he said, "this packet" (showing one of the two letters)
"is important; it has just arrived by a courier from Paris in
thirty-five hours. State this to Monsieur le comte; don't neglect to
do so; it may change his plans."

"Would he come ashore?"

"Possibly, my friend," said the notary, imprudently.

The sailor is, in all lands, a being of a race apart, holding all
land-folk in contempt. This one happened to be a bas-Breton, who saw
but one thing in Maitre Mathias's request.

"Come ashore, indeed!" he thought, as he rowed. "Make the captain lose
a passenger! If one listened to those walruses we'd have nothing to do
but embark and disembark 'em. He's afraid that son of his will catch
cold."

The sailor gave Paul the letter and said not a word of the message.
Recognizing the handwriting of his wife and de Marsay, Paul supposed
that he knew what they both would urge upon him. Anxious not to be
influenced by offers which he believed their devotion to his welfare
would inspire, he put the letters in his pocket unread, with apparent
indifference.

Absorbed in the sad thoughts which assail the strongest man under such
circumstances, Paul gave way to his grief as he waved his hand to his
old friend, and bade farewell to France, watching the steeples of
Bordeaux as they fled out of sight. He seated himself on a coil of
rope. Night overtook him still lost in thought. With the semi-darkness
of the dying day came doubts; he cast an anxious eye into the future.
Sounding it, and finding there uncertainty and danger, he asked his
soul if courage would fail him. A vague dread seized his mind as he
thought of Natalie left wholly to herself; he repented the step he had
taken; he regretted Paris and his life there. Suddenly sea-sickness
overcame him. Every one knows the effect of that disorder. The most
horrible of its sufferings devoid of danger is a complete dissolution
of the will. An inexplicable distress relaxes to their very centre the
cords of vitality; the soul no longer performs its functions; the
sufferer becomes indifferent to everything; the mother forgets her
child, the lover his mistress, the strongest man lies prone, like an
inert mass. Paul was carried to his cabin, where he stayed three days,
lying on his back, gorged with grog by the sailors, or vomiting;
thinking of nothing, and sleeping much. Then he revived into a species
of convalescence, and returned by degrees to his ordinary condition.
The first morning after he felt better he went on deck and passed the
poop, breathing in the salt breezes of another atmosphere. Putting his
hands into his pockets he felt the letters. At once he opened them,
beginning with that of his wife.

In order that the letter of the Comtesse de Manerville be fully
understood, it is necessary to give the one which Paul had written to
her on the day that he left Paris.

From Paul de Manerville to his wife:

My beloved,--When you read this letter I shall be far away from
you; perhaps already on the vessel which is to take me to India,
where I am going to repair my shattered fortune.

I have not found courage to tell you of my departure. I have
deceived you; but it was best to do so. You would only have been
uselessly distressed; you would have wished to sacrifice your
fortune, and that I could not have suffered. Dear Natalie, feel no
remorse; I have no regrets. When I return with millions I shall
imitate your father and lay them at your feet, as he laid his at
the feet of your mother, saying to you: "All I have is yours."

I love you madly, Natalie; I say this without fear that the
avowal will lead you to strain a power which none but weak men
fear; yours has been boundless from the day I knew you first. My
love is the only accomplice in my disaster. I have felt, as my
ruin progressed, the delirious joys of a gambler; as the money
diminished, so my enjoyment grew. Each fragment of my fortune
turned into some little pleasure for you gave me untold happiness.
I could have wished that you had more caprices that I might
gratify them all. I knew I was marching to a precipice, but I went
on crowned with joys of which a common heart knows nothing. I have
acted like those lovers who take refuge in a cottage on the shores
of some lake for a year or two, resolved to kill themselves at
last; dying thus in all the glory of their illusions and their
love. I have always thought such persons infinitely sensible.

You have known nothing of my pleasures or my sacrifices. The
greatest joy of all was to hide from the one beloved the cost of
her desires. I can reveal these secrets to you now, for when you
hold this paper, heavy with love, I shall be far away. Though I
lose the treasures of your gratitude, I do not suffer that
contraction of the heart which would disable me if I spoke to you
of these matters. Besides, my own beloved, is there not a tender
calculation in thus revealing to you the history of the past? Does
it not extend our love into the future?--But we need no such
supports! We love each other with a love to which proof is
needless,--a love which takes no note of time or distance, but
lives of itself alone.